“I feel like I can relax, too. Maybe it’s because of the baby and me having to depend on you a whole lot more. I think it started to happen before that, though.”
“You should do more of that, too.”
Simon nodded, but he looked less certain about that notion. “I just wish there was more I could do for you.”
This is it. This is my moment.
There was no possible way that there was going to be a better opportunity for this.
Nathan reached for his pocket and wrapped his fingers around the jewelry box. All the tempestuousness nervousness which had tortured him before had finally blown over, to be replaced by warm certainty. “You do plenty for me,” Nathan said. He pulled the box from his pocket, but kept it under the table for another few moments. There were so many words inside him, so many things that he wanted to say. Humans couldn’t express themselves like animals could, trading nuance for language; he would have to hope that whatever was lost in translation, the wolf inside Simon would be able to pick up on it.
“Simon, you make me happy. I was content before, proud and fulfilled, but now I’m happy in a way I didn’t think I would ever be. I didn’t ever really consider that I would have a relationship like this. I didn’t know I wanted it. I didn’t know I wanted a mate. I didn’t know I wanted a pup. It just all falls into place with you. That’s why I…I love you.”
Simon blinked suddenly, and then his eyes brightened a shade as tears brimmed up. “I’ve been feeling it grow for a long time. I love you, too.”
Nathan closed his eyes as relief and love flooded through his entire body. Everything inside him was so warm right now, so filled with all the emotions that words could never hope to express in a thousand years.
He started to lift up the jewelry box, and that was when the hostess appeared at their table. She surged up through the darkness like a harbinger of death, a blood-colored silhouette.
The image of the gory sky, the bleeding Elizabeth River, flashed through Nathan’s mind. He flinched before he even really registered what was happening. His fingers fumbled with the jewelry box, his body flinching like he’d missed the last step on a staircase. After an unnerving moment, he managed to shove the box back into his pocket.
“I’m so sorry to interrupt!” she exclaimed, out of breath. “But there’s someone breaking into a car outside, and I’ve already spoken to everyone else. It has to be yours! A light blue…”
Romance was suddenly the last thing on Nathan’s mind. A chill stole through him, chasing all the warmth away.
He knew.
This was it. The consequence of his forgetfulness.
Shoving his hands against the table, Nathan stood up so quickly that he knocked over his chair.
“Nate, stop!” Simon stood up a little slower, having to account for the weight of his stomach. If it hadn’t been for his stomach, he might have actually gotten up in time to grab Nathan by the wrist, to stop him from doing what he was about to do.
As it was, he just barely missed. His fingers scraped through the air so close to Nathan’s arm that it stirred through his hair.
“Sir, wait!” That was the hostess, speaking almost at the same time as Simon. “It’s much too risky to go out there! We’ve called the police…”
If he had been thinking straight, he would have taken a step back and realized that the police would be better able to handle this than he was. He was one man whose only weapon was the ability to turn into a wolf, which probably wasn’t going to be a solid tactic when there was a gigantic window along that side of the street. Every single person in Viola! who was curious about all the ruckus could push up against that window and see a wolf-man attacking what might appear to be an innocent bystander.
Meanwhile, the police would come in numbers. There would be at least a pair of officers in one patrol car, and more cops might arrive than that if they felt the situation warranted it. Each cop would have a baton, a gun, maybe pepper spray or a Taser.
He should have left it to them, and he would have done so if Simon had managed to catch onto him.
But Simon missed, and Nathan sprinted away from him, away from the hostess. Red rage covered his gaze as he ran, making the restaurant seem as if it had been the scene of a battle. He shoved his way past the other patrons, knocking over another couple of chairs during his mad dash for the front door. Waiters leapt out of his way, spilling drinks, and dropping plates on the floor.
It wasn’t so much the fact that his car was being broken into that made him so angry. Cars could be replaced. Windshields and windows could be repaired. Paint could be reapplied. That was the way all machines worked, in the name of convenience. When something was broken on a machine, even a wheeled one, there was always a way to repair it or to get a new one.
But, a price couldn’t be placed on memories. No amount of money would buy back the time Nathan had wasted up until this moment, nervously awaiting this perfect chance. You couldn’t buy another special night like this, because it was the only one.
That pissed him off. And it pissed him off because he knew the person attacking his car was Richard Cox. It had to be. There was no one else who would do this. No thief would attempt something so noisy and noticeable right next to a restaurant.
And it just plain infuriated him that this bastard hadn’t given up on whatever stupid vendetta he had against Simon, or teachers in general. It was fucking stupid, a child’s grudge.
No, it was dumber than that, because at least children could learn from their mistakes.
Bursting out through the front of the building, Nathan raced as fast as he could around the corner and in the direction he’d left his car. He was almost out of breath before he even got there, as wolves—and alphas especially—were meant for endurance and not speed. His arms pumped in time with his legs, while his heart seemed to be beating at least twice as fast as that.
The moment he came within sight of the street, he saw the culprit. It was a photograph of a moment, eternally frozen in his memory, like a flash of light marking his retinas. The man who could only be Richard Cox was middle-aged and balding, though he’d had the rest of his head shaved in an attempt to hide this fact; the shave had been some time ago, so now random tufts and bristles of hair protruded from his scalp. His facial hair was similarly uneven and patchy, making him look very much like any disheveled man you might see in an example of a mugshot. His eyes were hazy, glazed with light shining through the restaurant window. The skin around the sockets was puffy, as if he’d been drinking, or not sleeping well, or perhaps both.
Cox was a scrawny man, a thin and rat-like man, not at all what Nathan had been expecting. He thought he would be dealing with another young jerk, like Tobias Noble, not someone almost his age.
Scrawny or not, Cox had more than enough strength to lift a baseball bat up over his head and bring it down hard on the windshield of Nathan’s Malibu. Spiderwebs of cracks already covered the glass, and this additional blow finally broke through the crystalline surface. A distinctive shattering sound burst through the air, followed by a tinkling as shards of glass scattered across the concrete. Similar glimmers already coated the ground, making Nathan realize two of his other windows had already been bashed in.
This had nothing to do with breaking into the car. If that was what Cox had wanted, he would have already reached in, unlocked a door, grabbed anything he thought might be valuable, and then he would have run off into the night long before Nathan ever got word that something had happened to his pricey, little vehicle. This was something personal, an act of revenge, though Nathan was certain that he had never done anything to this man in his entire life.
“Hey!” Nathan barked. He marched forward, striding right up to Cox. His thoughts, his senses, were racing so fast that the entire world around him seemed to be moving in slow motion.
Cox lifted up the bat again and grinned savagely. His teeth were bloody for some reason. He had probably bit his tongue when the force of the bat striking glass
and metal made his body jump and shake around. For every action, there was an equal and opposite reaction; if a man hit a car with a baseball bat, the car hit back in its own sort of way.
“I been waiting a long time to deal with you, fucker,” Cox said. He shifted his hands on the bat, adjusting his grip.
Nathan lunged forward, grabbed the bat in the instant that Cox loosened his grip on the weapon and yanked it away. Holding onto the length of it with a hand on either side, he snapped it in half over his knee and then tossed the broken pieces into the street. Large splinters studded his skin now, not that he really cared. The pain meant nothing compared to his anger.
“What is your problem with me?” Nathan growled. He lowered his head, the wolf inside him flattening its ears and opening its jaws wide in an invisible threat. Cox might not have known exactly what was going on inside Nathan, but he did seem to understand that he was in danger. He took a step backwards, his eyes flicking over to the shards of his bat before bouncing back to Nathan.
“I haven’t done anything to you. You’re a deadbeat lowlife who attacked a defenseless old woman, and then got punished for it. By someone who wasn’t me. I don’t understand you.”
Once a principal, always a principal. Even furious, Nathan wanted to understand the motive involved here.
Cox flashed another of those bloody smiles, and it was as if he held a sunset inside him. His eyes glowed in an unholy manner, though that might have just been the way that a nearby streetlight illuminated him when he moved. “Don’t care about you,” Cox said. “I don’t want nothing to do with you. I want that friend of yours. Your fuck buddy.”
“Why? Explain this to me. Tell me what’s going on.”
“And why should I do that? You aren’t the one I’m after.”
I really should have looked into this man a very long time ago. I could have prevented all this if I wasn’t so distracted by everything else.
Sirens wailed in the distance as police cars received the news that something was amiss. The sound was thin and far away, rapidly approaching. They would be here in no time.
Nathan nodded in the general direction of the sound, though he suspected Cox might not be able to tell where the sirens were coming from like a wolf could. “You hear that? Police are coming. They’re going to come here. Beat you up. Maybe shoot you. Put you in handcuffs and make you stand in a courtroom where no one gives a shit about what you say. Tell me now, and at least you’ll know that someone paid attention for once.”
He was betting on there being some sort of underlying issue here, instead of this being the result of a random act of revenge. There was always a story underneath the story, a motive that drove actions like this. A person didn’t just do something without reason, and if they did, it was because something had gone wrong in their brain. In short, there was always a reason.
With kids, they wanted to talk. They wanted to have someone acknowledge their problem. It might be the same way with Cox.
Cox hesitated, and Nathan’s hopes rose. The longer this took, the more likely it was that Cox would break or just waste all his time before the police arrived. And they were close now, only a few blocks away by the sound of it. The wailing of sirens was deafening, hellish.
Then Cox shook his head, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a gun. Everything Nathan knew in the entire world was blown away with a single shot.
15
Simon was so stunned and horrified by the fact that Nathan had just gone and abandoned him in Viola! that he couldn’t move for a long time. In reality, only a few seconds actually passed. It felt like a thousand more, like he had been waiting in the same spot for years and years for his runaway lover to return.
There was chaos in the restaurant as all the patrons noticed something was greatly amiss. Most of them must have cast aside the notion that there was someone dangerous in their midst when they realized it wasn’t their vehicle being broken into; now that Nathan had disturbed them, they had become aware and consequently nervous. They formed a crowd, milling in the aisles, pressing against the windows. The quiet of only a few minutes before, the quiet that had reigned through the restaurant for the entire evening, suddenly broke and became a thunderous din as everyone tried to speak over everyone else. As a result, no one was really saying anything. They were just screaming.
Maybe it was the screaming that released Simon from the trancelike state he had been thrust into by shock and betrayal. Maybe it was the fact that the hostess grabbed him by the arm, her mouth moving as if she was trying to tell him something important.
Maybe it was the fact that he had finally, finally realized that Nathan had been working up to something momentous and important throughout this dinner. It hadn’t simply been for an exchange of “I love you’s.” It had been for something more, something that had been cut short.
Whatever the reason, it got Simon moving.
He yanked his arm away from the hostess and started to shove his way through the crowd. The patrons had been so spaced out before that he hadn’t quite understood just how many of them there were. Now that they were all crammed together, he was finally able to understand the scale of things. Everything was so, so much bigger than he previously thought.
If he had been human, he never would have gotten anywhere.
But Simon wasn’t human. He was a wolf. And not just a wolf, but a physically powerful omega, driven by adrenaline, love, and a protective instinct that had been developing inside him without him ever having noticed it until right this moment.
Where he stepped, the humans noticed him. It was his presence preceding him. Something buried deep inside them responded to the primal nature of the animal within him, and it made them get out of the way. Those who didn’t, who were incapable of doing so because they were all packed together into awkward spaces like sardines in a can, he pushed them away like they were as light as balloons.
Someone occasionally grabbed for him. Security, the hostess, Pascal the waiter. It didn’t matter. He kept pushing and shoving, redirecting the crowd with his very anger, until eventually he was at the front door. Sprinting the last couple feet, he burst through them and out into the calm of night. The air seemed chilled, almost cold, in stark contrast to the balmy moderateness of before.
As he rounded the corner of the building, Simon saw them. Nathan, his true mate, his future mate, his lover and his love, the only one who had ever understood him.
And he saw the man who he had bitten in the process of saving his mother that day at the craft store, the man who had presumably set Tobias Noble after him. The man known only as Richard Cox.
Nathan seemed to be speaking to Cox, who stood beside the beaten corpse of Nathan’s pretty little Chevy Malibu.
Maybe he’ll get him talked down, he thought.
Then came the gunshot.
The sound was high and sharp and fierce, yet also strangely muted a split second after that initial burst. Muffled screams echoed from the nearby restaurant.
Nathan staggered, clutching at his stomach with one hand. A comical expression of surprise flickered across his face, perfectly illuminated by all the various forms of light found within a city. He dropped down to his knees.
Someone howled, and Simon realized it was a wail of grief coming from his own throat. He, too, was on his knees. His joints ached abruptly, and his stomach jumped around from a force within as the baby kicked for the first time. Simon felt the presence that had bothered him so when he hadn’t known what it was; he finally understood that it was the baby, reacting to what he was feeling.
Reacting now, to his devastation.
Whirling red-and-blue lights flashed across the street as the police advanced another block, so close now that they might as well have already arrived. Cox glanced in the direction of the squealing vehicles, then lunged down and grabbed onto Nathan with both arms. The gesture was absolutely ridiculous, since Nathan was so broad and Cox was so emaciated, but size often had little to do in matters such as this when a
drenaline was involved. Pulling upwards on Nathan, with strength almost superhuman in nature, Cox dragged the limp wolf over to the rusty truck and tossed him inside. Then, snatching keys from his pocket, fumbling with the gun to do so, he jumped behind the steering wheel and pulled away from the curb fast enough to leave smoking black tread marks on the concrete.
Simon pushed himself sideways just as the truck blazed past him, picking up speed. The overheated tires missed him by only a few inches, stirring his hair around in all directions.
No telling where Cox was going, where he was taking Nathan. No telling how this was all going to end, except for very, very badly.
Reacting before he even really knew what he was doing, Simon shifted. He shifted right out there in the middle of the street with dozens of people watching, most of whom saw him stop being a man and become a wolf with golden fur and a rather long tail. Twisting around, Simon put his paws to pavement and streaked after the truck like he was made of light itself.
The rusty truck headed directly for the approaching police cars, some of which tried to swerve to block the road. Braking, the front of the truck wavered, and then its rear fishtailed, before the worn tires caught again. Cox must have slammed on the gas again because the heavy vehicle lurched forward again in a drunken manner, scraping between two cop cars. Scraps of paint flew and the truck lost both of its mirrors at once, one of which exploded upon contact with the ground.
The braking was what allowed Simon to catch up. He tucked his head down, pushed himself forward, to his limit and beyond even that, and then he jumped longer and higher than he had ever done before in his entire life. He hung in the air for a moment, as free and weightless as a bird, and then he crashed down chest-first into the back of the truck.
Alpha Principal Page 21